Heritability estimates for body weight and height at withers in Brazilian army horses

Abstract

The aim of this study was to estimate the heritability for weight and height at withers of 260-780 days of age No Defined Breed (NDB) horses, at intervals of 40 days, which belong to the Brazilian Army cavalry. Thus, the model considered the direct genetic effects as random ones, as fixed, the effects of sex and year of birth and the linear effects of height at withers and age, as covariates for the analysis of body weight, whereas for the analysis of height, the linear effect of weight was included as a covariate. For the complete data, the estimated heritability coefficients were 0.40±0.034 and 0.70±0.019 for weight and height at withers, respectively, indicating that individual selection for these traits may be effective. On the other hand, for the data subdivided into age classes, the heritability coefficients ranged between 0.04 and 0.77 for weight, with the highest estimation for the class between 440 and 480 days of age, which indicates a higher possibility of weight selection during this period. For height, the heritability values ranged between 0.08 and 0.98, being the highest estimate found between 300 and 340 days of age, corroborating, thus, to the selection of the trait at this age.